


A Past to be Shared

by goodisrelative



Category: Foyle's War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-22
Updated: 2011-12-22
Packaged: 2017-10-27 18:57:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,915
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/298974
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/goodisrelative/pseuds/goodisrelative
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam had never loved a job as much as she’d loved driving for Detective Chief Superintendent Christopher Foyle.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Past to be Shared

**Author's Note:**

  * For [katekane](https://archiveofourown.org/users/katekane/gifts).



> _Author’s Note:_ Thanks to all who beta’d, reassured me, let me freak out to them, etc. Thanks to evil_twin, rootsbroken, sabaceanbabe, and whenrabbitsattack for talking me down, betaing, encouraging and basically coddling the freaked out writer. Thanks all.

_Title:_ A Past To Be Shared  
 _Author:_  
 _Rating:_ PG-13  
 _Recipient:_  
 _Fandom: Characters/Parings:_ Foyle’s War: Samantha Stewart and OC: Anna Quinn.  
 _Disclaimer:_ Obviously, I own nothing. And if I did, BBC wouldn’t have cancelled this the first time and it would still be having new eps!!  
 _Spoilers:_ mentions of random scenes throughout the series 1-5.

Summary: _Sam had never loved a job as much as she’d loved driving for Detective Chief Superintendent Christopher Foyle._

 _Author’s Note:_ Thanks to all who beta’d, reassured me, let me freak out to them, etc.  
___________________________________________

“Will you tell me about the War, Grams? You never speak about it. Not like Gramps did.”

Samantha Quinn née Stewart smiled at her granddaughter. “It was a different world back then, dear.” Sam turned to look out the window by her chair. “A very different world. Not just the War, you see, but everything. The way the world’s changed since then has been wonderful to see, and yet heartbreaking, because so much is the same or worse.”

“But will you tell me?” Anna persisted. For once, she wasn’t going to let her grandmother avoid her questions. This was too important to her and she knew soon it might be too late.

Sam looked back at her granddaughter and realized that Anna was serious about wanting to know what it was like then for her. She wasn’t just asking to ask, but rather because she wanted to know, to understand.

“Tell me why you want to understand.”

“It was the beginning, Grams, when women first moved out of the home and into the work force. You’re a part of it. But it’s more than that. You lived in a time past, where chivalry lived, and everyone treated soldiers as heroes. I want to know what that was like.”

That Sam could understand. Anna was in the British Royal Air Force and had fought in Afghanistan. “Go into the back room and bring me the small chest.” While the girl was gone, she stood and slowly walked to the old desk she’d kept every time she’d moved since back then. From it she retrieved a key.

“Take these home with you and read them,” she told Anna when she returned with the chest. “Once you’ve finished them, we’ll talk, and I will try to answer any questions you have.” Sam held out the key.

+++++++

Later that evening, Sam sat staring into the fire she had started, lost in the past. The years of World War II were some of her fondest memories, and yet some of her most painful. She’d fallen in love with Andrew Foyle then and he’d hurt her greatly. More so, Andrew’d hurt his father in the way he’d treated her.

Sam had never loved a job as much as she’d loved driving for Detective Chief Superintendent Christopher Foyle. She could be herself – inquisitive and plucky, she’d been called. Working with Mr. Foyle meant that her curiosity had grown and she’d become even more independent than her father thought best for a girl. It had made her into the woman she’d come to appreciate, with a strength in character and beliefs many her age, and especially her sex, were not allowed the luxury of.

+++++++++

Anna started the notebooks. She wouldn’t call them journals; they weren’t. Her grandmother had written thoughts and feelings, in complete sentences, no less, but not every day and hadn’t fully explained those thoughts and feelings.

 _Mr. Foyle came by again tonight. The nurses, they told me. He must be worried. They won’t tell me anything, but I know it’s not good._

Anna knew from the date of the entry that it had to be when her grandmother had had anthrax. Anna wondered briefly if her grandmother had known when she wrote those words that it was anthrax. Anna didn’t think so, but she’d ask to be sure.

Anna had researched her grandmother’s record from WWII the moment she learned her grandmother had served. Anna’d been sixteen at the time and already looking at serving in the Royal Air Force. Her mother had mentioned Anna might want to talk to her grandmother in passing, but it had been her grandfather who’d come out and said Sam had served. It was after that comment that Anna’d researched anyone and anything she could connect to her grandmother’s service time. Given her lack of information, she hadn’t learned much more than the official file contents.

The precious words written by her grandmother back then meant the world to Anna and she was fairly certain her grandmother knew that.

 _Chaos. She’s a year older than I, 23. Right outside my room, gone. Glass broke. Window shattered in. Fire. Sirens. Chaos. Mr. Foyle there. Milner too. Mr. Foyle told me to sit. I didn’t want to leave. Chaos was me then._

Anna’d started out of order, because she hadn’t realized the order until she’d scanned through three books. Then she went back, put them in order and started reading.

 _There is a saying, maybe I picked it up from the Americans at some point, the third time is the charm. I met a man tonight and after he said hello, he told me he was going to marry me. I laughed at him. But now, three hours later, I have to wonder. We talked most of the night. He kissed me goodbye. When California asked, I felt as though I were at a crossroads. Tonight, rather this morning, I feel confident I’d know where to go if he’d asked. Samantha Quinn has a ring to it, I do believe. And he can dance._

Anna smiled as she read her grandmother’s thoughts about first meeting her grandfather. War dances were another thing Anna wanted to know about. She knew her grandmother loved to dance, and they shared the same taste in music. Big Band, jazz, the music of the 1940’s. Anna loved watching her grandparents dance. They weren’t themselves, it seemed to her, but rather back in a place long past.

There was so much else in those notebooks. Anna felt she knew her grandmother as a real person rather than simply her grandmother after reading them through, twice now. She had plans to meet her grandmother on Saturday so they could talk. Anna couldn’t wait and for once wished she could call into her job.

++++++++

Saturday finally came.

Sam spoke once Anna had settled on her couch. “It was a different time, with different ideas. Innocent in ways today could never be, even if we were at war. There were still strict rules of conduct for men and women, even if women moved into the work force since there just wasn’t anyone else. And that’s really what the whole situation boiled down to. Factories and businesses needed bodies to do the work. Men were off at war. Women were all that were left. It was an accidental birth to the equality movement. But I never paid that much mind. I loved driving Mr. Foyle and working with the police.”

Anna watched her grandmother’s eyes lose focus as she touched the top leather-bound notebook. She knew the older woman was back in her past, reliving memories that obviously made her happy.

“Honestly, I didn’t understand or really even see how much we were changing the world back then. I was in Hastings; it was the War; and time still marched on. I was young and foolish then, driving a big black car, wearing a uniform and sticking my nose into matters that should never have concerned me. But, I was a part of the team. Mr. Foyle never let me stray too far, he was far too much a gentleman, and put me in my place a time or two, when needed. But he never made me feel anything but a part of the team. I knew too much about things proper young ladies didn’t – even those who were working. I liked the grease – although not being a mechanic working for _that_ woman. And sometimes, what I knew helped solve the case. The War was always a part of life back then, but it was the backdrop, not the star.”

“Who was California, Gram?”

“A sweet young boy who was the first to ask me to marry him. I didn’t think him serious at first, and I’m not sure he was, at least the first time he asked. Two heartbeats and a seashell later, and he was serious. He asked me right before my bout with anthrax. He was a Yank. An American flyboy who it turns out even told Mr. Foyle that his intentions towards me were honourable. He was sweet and brought me to a crossroad in my life. I don’t know what I’d have done if I hadn’t contracted anthrax two days later. But coming so close to death made me realize I wasn’t ready for him and what he represented – marriage, a family, America.”

“What was it like when the soldiers came home?”

“You have to remember that both Great Wars were the last of a different breed of war. Things changed after them, because of them, because of the horrors and because of the technology, and sadly, I think, because people grew more complacent, or wanted wars with less impact on civilians, or, I don’t even know. War became impersonal after that one. It was fought with larger planes and weapons that launched rather than rifles and machine guns and close quarters combat – even the dog fights of WWII no longer exist.” Sam refocused on Anna. “We had a personal stake in our soldiers, because it meant we, here at home, were safe from our enemies. If they had failed, we would not exist. But that was then. Now wars are fought a continent away and it doesn’t touch those left at home unless they know a person serving.” And then she was lost in memories again. “But then, it was parades and celebrations for those who returned. Ticker-tape and brass bands. No one talked about those who came back missing a piece of themselves. The mental cost of war was never, ever mentioned. You just didn’t mention it. It was the worst possible answer to all the boys who returned home. Some so young when they left, returning having seen too much to cope with the war over. It’s better now. Maybe we’ve lost the ticker tape and brass bands, but I’d trade that in a heartbeat for the way we acknowledge the mental and physical toll war takes on you all.”

Anna asked other questions – only the first few on her list. They’d spend days going through the notebooks and her questions in the future, Anna was sure.

+++++++++

Samantha Quinn smiled as she watched her granddaughter leave hours later. She knew the girl had thousands of questions still, but they had time to work through them.

Samantha knew, too, that there were questions Anna would never ask, because Sam had never had the courage to write the words in any notebook. There were memories she avoided because of the questions they would force her to ask herself about her time undercover, working with the women at the spitfire factory and other times she never dwelled on. The questions those memories brought made Sam think of how differently her life course might have veered. Dwelling on it now, so late in life, was pointless because she’d never trade her family for the slim thought of what might have been.


End file.
